Capital Bagel Bakery

I’ve been goiong to this place for many years. The place is always crowded with young and old. They know me when I arrive and as I am bit of a creature of habit, they always just start making my favorite! Everyone is cheerful and helpful. Best Bagels anywhere! Darn close to the infamous NY bagel! I found out today that they are closing due to a dipute with the landlord (WREIT). HAve to wonder if they just aren’t high class enough anymore now that Bradlee is «upgrading» with Fresh Market, Starbucks, a new Massage place and Zoe’s Kitchen (though I love that place! too). I surely hope that CBB finds a new location and opens again!!! In the meantime, I’ll just be sad on he weekends when I have no where to go for a good bagel treat!

This is my go to stop for bagels. They are chewy on the outside and soft in the middle. Perfect and they bake them all day so it’s likely you can buy one that’s still warm if you ask. Cream cheese is a bit expensive for what you get, it’s never enough for a half a dozen bagels.

Been going there for almost thirty years. I even worked there as a kid, I love this place but it has been going down in quality and service over the past several years after a few ownership changes. The bagels are still pretty good and the cream cheese is just right. The staff gets very unorganized and slow when they’re only slightly busy and hands out the wrong orders. Someone else got my order and they left the store. A couple minutes past and they brought it back and the cashier just have it to us and acted like nothing was wrong. I hate to be picky but making a fresh order for us should have been a no brained. I would like to make this place a tradition for my kids like it was for me but they need to tighten up just a bit.

I live in the neighborhood, and always try to send my business to the locals. The bagels are great, but get them to go, and get in and out as quick as you can. The service is rarely friendly and the place is never clean. It’s a better option than Alexandria Pastry Café across the street which is never pleasant, but I just wish it was a little more enjoyable to pop in, experience a warm greeting and eat breakfast. The Capitol Breakfast deal is super cheap, but actually pretty gross. I usually get one to punish my hangover away.

We thought we would make one more stop on our way out of DC and swing by a local bagel shop for a tasty and filling breakfast. Unfortunately, we were seriously disappointed. Two of us were amazed by the advertized «Capital Breakfast». How could meat, eggs, two pancakes, hash browns AND a bagel only be $ 5? The kitchen looked like it could support that kinda meal, but apparently not. The whole meal was microwaved prepackaged food. Totally awful. Even the bagel, which at least looked great, was tasteless and chewy. We would have been much better off at the McDonald’s in the same plaza. Our third group mate ordered a bagel with lox which he says was ok but was drowned in an excessive amount of cream cheese.

I love Capital Bagel. We go there almost every Saturday morning. They have fantastic bagels. They have the traditional: everything, poppy, wheat etc. but they also have more daring flavors like chipotle and seasonal flavors like pumpkin in the fall. They also have really good coffee.
Try: The Turkado: turkey, swiss, avocado, sprouts, lettuce, tomato (soooo good)

I have been coming to this place on and off for years. I love their bagel sandwiches, and my absolute favorite is chicken salad and Munster cheese on a egg bagel. Sometimes toasted, sometimes not, but it always turns out well, and this Bagel Boy is satisfied with his bagel lunch. They also have a nice assortment of cream cheeses and bagels which makes for the cool care package home.
The staff is super friendly and the service is surprisingly quick considering the long lines that can form in this utilitarian shop. I wouldn’t put this on the level of a New York bagel bakery, but then what is? Also, I do wish they had a better bottled soda selection but the selection of chips serves as a nice compliment to the bagel sandwich.

Great bagels and toppings. Skip the hash brown though it’s just not worth getting.

Generally yummy bagels, but today was the third time in a row they gave me a completely burned (literally charred) bagel. The fact that it never occurs to them to re-​do the bagel annoys me. If there was another bagel place in such close proximity, I would probably go there instead.

I give this place 4 stars for one reason… I moved to Colorado a little over one year ago, and people asked me what food I missed most and I instantly thought of the inexpensive, yet consistently delicious bagels and bagel sandwiches at this joint with a black cup of coffee and a chocolate milk. Whether its a hangover cure or a Tuesday afternoon, the mundane becomes a delectable delight with the Bagel Bakery.

I’ve been coming here on occasion for years because of the sheer convenience of location. The bagel selection is great and the bagels themselves are on the large side. If you just want to swing by and pick up some bagels to go, I recommend this place.
However, a few negatives: very time I enter this place, I am hit with a strong smell of disinfectant. It is impossible to ignore, and very overpowering. Maybe it’s an odd thing to put in a review of an establishment, but it’s honestly kind of ruined my appetite at times (the irony is that this isn’t the cleanest bagel bakery I’ve seen, either– there are frequently crumbs at every table I’ve seen). So, I wouldn’t recommend eating here, but it’s a good spot to pick up sandwiches/​bagels and go.

Considering there are limited bagel options in the DMV, capital bagel is about as good as it gets for bagels around here. Compare to a real NY bagel place I’m sure it’d fail, but for the area these are pretty good bagels. Large, crispy outside, doughy inside, plenty of cream cheese, all pretty inexpensive. Wish I lived a little closer. This puts Brueggers to shame!

This is the only bagel place we found in the area, and it’s pretty good.
They have a ton of bagel flavors, cream cheeses, sandwich options, drinks, chips, you name it, and the prices are really reasonable. They also have day-​old 6-​packs of bagels for like, $ 2. It’s a steal.
We’ve come here a number of times and it’s pretty quick service. Just know what you want when you get to the counter so you’re not holding everyone else up.

I’m ⁵⁰⁄₅₀ on this place. Fundamentally, the bagels are very good and they have a wide selection.
The sandwiches are only so-​so. I usually only get the breakfast sandwiches. The sandwich parts seem all pre-​made and microwaved. The eggs are fluffy but a little chewy and not too flavorful.
A good deal is the Capital Breakfast which is eggs, hash brown, choice of meat, 2 pancakes and a bagel for $ 4.59 (whereas bkfst sandwiches are ~$ 3.69).
They REALLY need to recycle. Outside of everything in the place having a film on it from everyone’s grubby buttery fingers, that’s my biggest complaint. I’m not a super hippy but they go through so many paper bags and plastic containers (that are then put into a bag) not to mention glass bottles from drinks, etc. It’s sad to see everything just being dumped in the trash when it’s not hard at all to make a recycle bin.
Seriously, live in the now!

Capital Bagel Bakery is the best bagel shop around for sure. I’ve been going here on average four times a month for the past five years. The bagels are great, the sandwiches are good, but the service is only OK. They have plenty of selection for bagels, sandwiches, drinks and even chips. Their coffee is good too.
The servers often get orders wrong when they are busy, and there is sometimes a language barrier. Not a major deal but it does get old after a while. The ordering process can also be hectic if it’s busy, so know what you want before you reach the counter. It may help them to write things down… My orders are usually have a 50% of being wrong when the place isn’t empty. It would be one thing if they were nice about it, but a few of the girls that work there have an apathetic and annoyed attitude that gets old quickly.
Overall I’m very happy with the place and glad it is around. They’ll get my business for years to come as long as the service doesn’t slip any further. Good bagels are just too hard to find.

Yes, they microwave their eggs and bacon. Yes, the staff is haughty and unhelpful. Yes, the coffee is thin; the bagels are hit-​or-​miss (though to be fair, more often than not they do hit); the parking lot is a disaster. But, what earns the one star and a death-​sentence is the fact that even after charging $ 8.99 for a dozen bagels, they hit me with a $ 1 charge to slice the bagels – which they didn’t even mention until I got to the register and which I’ve never been charged in the two years I’ve patronized the joint. Let me repeat that: they charged me $ 1 to slice my bagels AT A BAGEL SHOP.
I’ve been underwhelmed by this place before, but their bagels are decent, which is tough to find in the area. The nickel-​and-​diming is utterly asinine, though, forcing me to drop the bomb:
Capitol Bagel… YOU’RE DEAD TO ME!

I know I’ve been here a few times and was shocked to see that I had not written a review for it yet.
Here is the good and the bad. It’s straight out of a New York. Attitude, prices, and all. I don’t mind taking the good with the bad though. The bagels taste fresh, there is a large variety, and they’re very inventive with the bagels.
I had the «Washington «and the three cheese roast beef. Not at the same time. Both times, there seemed to be quite a bit of cream cheese on the bagel. Thats cool though, I understand some people love it and I can dig it.
All in all, sandwich, drink, chips will run you around 10 $, which is a lot. Will I eat here again? Maybe if I get a hankering for a cream cheese sandwich, otherwise probably not.

Hell no… not coming back to this place…
I ordered a tuna melt on a bagel… The dude that works there slapped some dry tuna on the bagel… and some cheese… I look and notice there is NO LETTUCE AND NO TOMATOES! No bueno… So I asked if I could have some lettuce and tomato because that what you put on a tuna melt… He then charged me a dollar for the tomato… bagel didn’t even taste fresh… *rolls eyes*

Not bad, not bad. I have had both the multi-​grain and sesame bagels from Capital, and both were decent. Not fabulous, and a little too big, but they hit the spot.
Now, the quality of the sandwich depends on who is working. The first time I went, my bagel was toasted perfectly, there was only a little bit of butter, and the lox was delicious. The second time, there was too much butter and the bagel was barely toasted. Also, each time there was a price difference.
Long lines move quickly, staff is not friendly to the point of almost being rude.

Oh, what does a Jersey expatriate have to do to get a decent bagel? Chain stores like Einstein Brothers are a joke. Bakeries like Best Buns carry bagels, but only do so half-​heartedly (they’ve been out of everything except plain by 8AM on a weekend, which is how I ended up coming to Capital Bagel Bakery in the first place). So when I found Capital Bagel Bakery, I thought I had found the best I could find in my corner of the northern Virginia area.
The bagels are good for not being made by an old Jewish guy who has been making bagels and bialy’s since his youth. There is a good variety of toppings and cream cheese spreads to choose from, and they make sandwiches as well.
The prices aren’t great, unless you’re just getting a basic bagel with nothing on it. The bagels go for $ 0.89/each, which is a good price, but the cream cheeses and toppings are overpriced. How is it that a bagel with scallion cream cheese is close to $ 3.00 and more than a bagel with egg and cheese? Please.
I experienced one of my other pet peeves during my last visit: debit card minimums. I’ve been to Capital Bagel Bakery probably over ten times and never have bought more than a couple of bagels, so my bill has always been under $ 5. I always pay by debit card because I rarely carry cash and it’s never been a problem. The last time I went though, I waited in line for five minutes to get to the cashier to pay for my everything bagel with scallion cream cheese, which was about $ 2.89, and the guy asks if I have cash. I tell him I don’t and he says there is a $ 5 minimum. Not only do I see no sign stating this, I’ve bought less than $ 5 worth of bagels here plenty of times with a debit card. So after staring at me cluelessly for an awkward period of time, I hand him the bag back and walked out.
Business owners: I know that credit card merchant fees suck, but don’t take it out on your customers. This guy was more willing to eat the cost of throwing out that bagel and cream cheese and piss off a customer than to pay a merchant fee on by debit card transaction. Considering I can use my debit card at food trucks without issue, there’s no excuse for a brick and mortar store to have arcane policies like this. Debit cards are a fact of life and part of the cost of doing business.